From a friend: Invisible Children's 3 owners made about $90,000 each, on top of having living, travel, and related expenses paid for by the company...so basically close to $100,000 free and clear.
The average Ugandan household makes about $300 / year, and famine and disease is rampant.
Less than 1/3rd of donations make it to actual direct support for Ugandans and other affected people. The rest is tied up in "administrative expenses".

Mik, does your friend have any documentation to back that up? Or is it hearsay? ARe you guys arguing that this Kony guy isn't real? Or that he's not bad? Do you think he should be stopped? Yes, i donated, no I didn't look into it further. I think the main point is to get our government to take action in our names, to do our bidding. At least that is how I felt about it. People post links on this site to incidents of 1 family getting murdered or a child being abused and the outrage is crazy... Kony does this to 30k kids and some of your first reactions is to question the motives of Invisible Children. I say who gives a sh*t what their motives are if the fundamental idea behind the movement is morally right. They are succeeding at bringing the issue into mainstream media, good for them. Just an opinion.

mik, does your friend have any documentation to back that up? Or is it hearsay? Are you guys arguing that this kony guy isn't real? Or that he's not bad? Do you think he should be stopped? Yes, i donated, no i didn't look into it further. I think the main point is to get our government to take action in our names, to do our bidding. At least that is how i felt about it. People post links on this site to incidents of 1 family getting murdered or a child being abused and the outrage is crazy... Kony does this to 30k kids and some of your first reactions is to question the motives of invisible children. I say who gives a sh*t what their motives are if the fundamental idea behind the movement is morally right. They are succeeding at bringing the issue into mainstream media, good for them. Just an opinion.

I think the point of invisible children is to raise awareness, yes there are other charities that may help out more monetarily, but would you have even looked into it further without seeing the KONY 2012 video? I wouldn't have..

"Invisible Children reports that in an official account of the $13.7 million raised in the 2010/11 financial year, $8.8 million was allocated for expenses - including filming costs, transportation and production."

If the goal of the charity is to raise awareness of their cause, then it certainly seems like the 8.8MM was well spent as it has been quite successful. IMO, you can pick apart anything in this world. And when a cause becomes popular, there are always going to be those that do everything to tear it down to make themselves feel smarter than everyone else. I gave money to a few other charities this year, anyone else want to try and make me feel like a retard for doing so?

Kony hasn't been active in the area since 06, he has pretty much gone to ground and is in exile. Yes he is a bad guy, yes he should be brought to justice, no, spending money doing that won't help the children who are still child soldiers on both sides of the conflict. Invading Uganda to achieve this goal is wrong wrong wrong IMO. I find the exploiting of "white mans guilt" to fund invisible children totally cynical. So I can't say nothing when I see the blind sharing of this stuff.

Whether you want to donate to the Invisible Children or not, the message is a good one. Joseph Kony needs to be brought to justice. The LRA is not something that will go away and despite its reduced capacity Kony is likely just biding his time.

IC still spent $5million in direct services, that sounds pretty good to me. What NGO or NPO operating from halfway around the world doesn't have high operating expenses? And I'm sure the $8 mill on the staff/travel/video production paid for itself by Wednesday night.

Don't understand what the point of sharing the financial statements are, most non-profit organizations are run very inefficient from a "balance sheet" stand point. They simply don't implore the resources necessary to run a lean business model, I don't think that is there goal. The goal of a nonprofit, IMO, should be to bring awareness to issues that is often over looked, try to raise funds to address the issue, and eventually solve the problem. Regardless of their financial statement it sure looks like in the initial stages they are on their way to accomplishing those goals, therefore a donation to them I believe is money well spent.

One additional point: If they succeed in solving the issue I for one have no problem if they line their pockets. Just like I would have no problem if someone lined their pockets to cure cancer. There are just some people that will always have something negative to say.

One additional point: If they succeed in solving the issue I for one have no problem if they line their pockets. Just like I would have no problem if someone lined their pockets to cure cancer. There are just some people that will always have something negative to say.

You have a very good point here. I have seen fraud on many different scales, so I may be a little quick to point fingers. I just don't like seeing people get taken advantage of.